Area base initiatives (ABIs) can be seen as a kind of hot-spots for experimentation with collaborative innovation between public actors and private stakeholders. Studies of the ABI’s can produce valuable knowledge about the challenges and possibilities related to enhancing collaborative innovation aiming to solve wicked problems. Not least do they hold important knowledge about how public managers can deal with the new task of managing innovation processes that involve public authorities as well as private stakeholders. The paper aims to show how managers of collaborative innovation processes in ABI’s cope with their new role and functioning and to use this analysis as a point of departure for developing a model for the management of collaborative innovation.
Based on readings of the theoretical literature on public innovation and public leadership, we propose four new roles for public managers that we label: the guide, the motivator, the culture maker; the communicator. We use these roles as an analytical frame for investigating the practices and self perceptions of a number of ABI managers involved in collaborative innovation in Copenhagen, Denmark. The focus will be on how they take on the role as managers in different phases in the collaborative innovation process: the idea phase, the decision making phase, the implementation phase and the dissemination phase.
The empirical date derives from an in depth study of the management practices six leaders of Area-Based- Initiatives in neighbourhoods in Copenhagen, Denmark. The data includes field observations and interviews as well as focus group interviews and workshop sessions held over a period from September 2012 to March 2013.
